Aurora's award-winning water to be bottled and sold by California company

Aurora, Colorado has several things going for it. While its collection of pawn shops and motels may or may not be among them, the city's water definitely is. (Check out this impressive list of awards!) This week's cover story, "Wish You Were Here!" explains how the eager city is hoping...

By Melanie Asmar

March 9, 2012

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Aurora, Colorado has several things going for it. While its collection of pawn shops and motels may or may not be among them, the city's water definitely is. (Check out this impressive list of awards!) This week's cover story, "Wish You Were Here!" explains how the eager city is hoping to lure tourists. But in the meantime, it's also luring bottling companies thirsty to capture and capitalize on Aurora's spectacular-tasting H20.

Aurora's city council has agreed to offer waivers and rebates of city taxes up to $502,500 to the California-based Niagara Bottling, according to the Aurora Sentinel. The company hopes to construct a plant at ProLogis Park that would create up to 36 jobs, the Sentinel reports. Niagara would use about 300,000 gallons of water a day, which city officials say is less than one percent of Aurora's total water production.

While the bottling plant is expected to boost Aurora's coffers, its potential is tiny compared to that of a proposed 1,500-room hotel and conference center that Tennessee-based Gaylord Entertainment wants to build in the city. The city has also offered incentives to Gaylord -- up to $300 million in tax rebates. Gaylord needs more money to make the $825 million project happen, however. Yesterday, Aurora and Gaylord made a pitch before the Colorado Economic Development Commission for a rebate of 81 percent of the sales taxes generated by the new hotel.

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Melanie Asmar is a staff writer for Westword. She joined the paper in 2009 and has won awards for her stories about education, immigration and epic legal battles. Got a tip? She'd love to hear it.

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